YAY – We get a new weapon category – but are they useful? Let’s take a look at the new Grav family.

First of all I’m super excited to have a new special weapon category. How many years have we been debatingthe finer points of :

FlamervsMeltavsPlasma

So here’s what the tubes say we are looking at:

GRAV WEAPONS:

-Have the Concussive special rule-Weapons are not Blast weapons.-Wound the target based on their Armor Save. For example a terminator has a 2+ save so they would be wounded on a die roll of 2+. Against vehicles roll a die, 1-5 does nothing and on a 6 the vehicle is Immobilized and loses a Hull Point.

Grav-Pistols and Grav-Rifles are available to all units that haves access to Pistol upgrades and Special Weapons, respectively. Grav-Cannons are only available to Devastator Centurions.

So, take a good look at that and tell me, what’s the deal with Grav weapons versus say Plasma and which would you equip?

In a whole lot of cases, the plasma family is still doing a better job for you, and it seems like the set of best case targets for Grav are kind of a scattershot bunch. On the other hand, that Concussive is an interesting twist from the point of view of overwatching fire. There may indeed be cases where that monstrous creature bearing down on you gets zapped and dropped to I:1 in the assault, which you may be able to take advantage of. It’s also nice to have an answer to scary monsters that wont fry your own guys (no Gets Hot)

For me, the advantages of plasma versus light-medium vehicles versus the advantages of Grav against high toughness low AP targets is the real trade-off. But how many of those Wraithlord/Riptides kind of foes are there? Perhaps those target’s relative power makes up the risk of taking Grav acceptable, as those type of units tend to be very high cost and having an answer to them can swing a game in your favor much more profoundly than killing an extra Rhino or two with your Plasmas…

When you factor in the rules like Slow and Purposeful for the Grav-cannon toting Centurion Devastators it gets even more tricky to calculate.

The traditionalist in me says Plasma is still king, but I’m not sold on that…